Missouri, Kansas City: Fountains in Barbecued Corn Fields

Kansas City was located in the heart of the United States, in the state of Missouri, and it was a place that was famous for its barbecue and jazz, among other things. The city was split between two states, with Kansas being the other one. With us being so close to Kansas, we decided to venture into that state for an afternoon trip on one of our days in Kansas City; you can read about that part of the trip further down this journal entry. First, though, we'll start with the Missouri portion of the city.

When researching information about the city, we found out that it had more boulevards than Paris and more working fountains (at least 200) than any city but Rome. We saw much evidence of this as we were driven around the city by a couple of friends, Heather and Karen, and we observed that a fountain of some sort was incorporated into the design of nearly every commercial building. That must have been the main reason that Kansas City had received its second nickname, "The City of Fountains."

Since Kansas City was the sister city to Seville, Spain, The Plaza area was designed with a Spanish style of architecture

We can't claim that we established the next facts in this paragraph, but they were too interesting to leave out. Hopefully, you will learn something, as we did when we came across the following details: "Established as a fur trading post in 1821, Kansas City played a major role in American history as a gateway for pioneers heading west along the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe trails. In the mid-1800s, settlers, missionaries, and traders began their overland journeys there or from nearby Independence and Westport, two cities that were also located in Missouri. Several Civil War battles were fought there, and the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, began his political career there. Jazz musicians Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington played in the nightclubs of the 18th and Vine District, Walt Disney first sketched Mickey Mouse in a Kansas City garage, and Joyce Hall (co-founder of Hallmark Cards) made his first greeting card there."

Since Heather and Karen have been mentioned, and now that you have had your fill of fun facts, we should let you know who they were. For those of you who read the Springfield, Missouri, journal entry, you will now have learned that Kyle attended his first year of university at Southwest Missouri State (now called Missouri State). Obviously, if you haven't read that entry, you should click back to it and catch up before reading this travelling tale, but don't get confused over the mention of another Karen in that entry; the Karen in this entry is a different person. Heather and Karen attended the same university with Kyle, they lived in the dorm room above his and Karen's boyfriend at the time lived directly across from Kyle; thus, friendships were forged with many fun nights out and the usual happenings of university students.

We planned a visit to Kansas City to see Heather, who lived there, and Karen offered to come to Heather's, too, in order to drive us to our next destination, St. Louis (Missouri), where she lived. That worked out really well because we both used airmiles for our flights from Little Rock (Arkansas) to Kansas City, and American Airlines couldn't offer us a direct flight to St. Louis from there. That meant that it would take us at least 6 hours to get to St. Louis by plane, whereas the driving time was less than 4 hours. Also, we really enjoyed catching up with Karen during the drive.

The flight we had booked was scheduled to leave on the same day that Sophia was scheduled to leave Arkansas from Little Rock International Airport. She had visited us from London for ten days and we had a busy and fun trip with her. She was flying to London via Houston on Continental Airlines and we were flying to Kansas City via Chicago on American Airlines. Our flight was due to depart first, so she waited with us at our gate until we left. We all enjoyed frappucinos from Starbucks - thanks Sophia for treating us! - and chatted whilst waiting for the plane to board. We said our goodbyes and were soon on the plane to Chicago, where we then changed planes to head to our final destination of the day.

Heather picked us up at the airport in Kansas City, where we both had received a major shock in the baggage claim area. As soon as we got to the carousel to collect our bags, they were there waiting for us! Normally, our experience in US airports was that we would have to wait at least 20-30 minutes to get our bags, so you can imagine the shocked but pleased look on our face when we called Heather and said we had arrived and were ready to be picked up. She had just pulled her car into the airport, outside the Arrivals section, and we were in her car, heading to her house, before we knew it!

At Heather's house, we were instantly greeted by her very excited dog, Jersey, who was an adorable boxer. The other pet of the house was a very fluffy white and orange cat named Jack, who was much more subdued, even though he still loved attention as much as Jersey. We had a great time playing with Heather's animals and we think they loved us as well. We spent a couple of hours talking with Heather and catching up, since we hadn't seen her since Karen's (the one mentioned in the Springfield journal) wedding a few years before. Next, we headed out to grab some food and see the movie, "Ratatouille".

We ate at a chain burrito restaurant called "Chipotle" and while we were talking to the staff who took our food orders, the manager ended up comping our food, which meant that she gave it to us for free, an unexpected surprise! After eating, we went to the movie theatre and, even though the movie was funny, we were all a little bit tired, so we struggled to keep our interest in it the entire time (read between the lines, there was a little dozing during the slower parts). It didn't help that the movie theatre was freezing cold from the air conditioning and it made the two hours very unpleasant. It was nice to walk outside in the warm air afterwards!

On our second day at Heather's, which was our first full day in the city, Karen (from St. Louis, not the "Springfield" Karen) came to see us. She was originally from Kansas City and knew the city very well; Heather was a glorified suburbanite and knew the outskirts well, so she was happy to have Karen there as an additional tour guide for us during our visit. Whilst we waited for Karen to arrive that day, Heather made us a tasty breakfast of scrambled eggs (with monterrey jack cheese melted inside - yum!), bacon and toast. For the toast, we spread some of her dad's homemade seedless blackberry jam on it; all of the food was really good. We continued catching up and played with Jack and Jersey some more, until Karen completed her journey to Heather's house.

When Karen was finally in Heather's living room, we all spent an hour catching up and then left to see downtown Kansas City. Heather had to make a trip to her pharmacy to pick up a prescription and, after picking up the prescription, we stopped at a QT (Quik Trip) gas station to purchase soft drinks. The roadside store was amazing; the fountain soft drink machine was self-serve and even had the ability to add vanilla and/or cherry flavour to drinks, not to mention the choice of all of the soft drink brands available there!

After leaving QT, we took a trip to state #3 on our summer tour in the United States. We mentioned towards the beginning of this journal entry that we took an afternoon trip to Kansas. There, Heather and Karen took us to see the Kansas Speedway NASCAR race track and surrounding area. A large part of the surrounding area had been developed into a shopping mecca with many great stores, restaurants and bars, as well as other things for the entire family to do. The areas around the race track that had not been developed consisted mainly of corn fields, corn fields and more corn fields. We did mention that we visited Kansas, right? Well, many people think of flat corn fields when they think of Kansas, so it was appropriate that we ran across a few during our short jaunt into the state.

Heather and Karen drove us around a few areas in the city before stopping off for an early dinner at the most famous barbecue place in town. Read further down about "Arthur Bryant's", but for now we will continue our story after we left dinner. We went to the 18th and Vine area, an area that was very famous for jazz clubs several decades ago. The area became run down over the years, but had been renovated in the more recent years, to encourage people to visit the area. There were many museums and a few jazz clubs on the main street there and we spent some time walking around before moving to our next stop.

Next, we visited the area around the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum. In front of the grand building, there was a huge green lawn where many people would have picnics when concerts were held in front of the museum's entrance. Also on the lawn, there were many sculptures, the most notable of which were two huge shuttlecocks. Please don't ask us what the connection was between the shuttlecocks and Kansas City because we just assumed they were sculptures that were part of a larger exhibit inside the enormous museum.

Listening to Jazz Music at "The Phoenix" was on our agenda for that evening, but when we arrived outside the music club, we were all very disappointed because it was closed. Therefore, we went to a sports bar and pub called "Tanner's", which was located a couple of blocks over from "The Phoenix". We were still downtown at that point and we ended up staying at "Tanner's" for several hours, enjoying many Kansas City beers and playing several games, including pool, electronic bowling and trivia on a bartop game console. Taco Bell was a needed stop on the way home, to ensure we didn't wake up with fuzzy heads from all of the pints we had drunk. Kyle ate a couple of things and Dan didn't, so it was no surprise when Dan told Kyle in the morning that he "wasn't feeling well".

On our last day before leaving for St. Louis, the next destination on our trip, we took a quick stroll around The Plaza area downtown to see that unique part of Kansas City. The area was very nice and clean and looked brand new, even though it has been there for several years. Since Kansas City was the sister city to Seville, Spain, the area was designed with a Spanish style of architecture. We both thought that it was a very interesting place to visit as it looked much different to other shopping areas in the US that we had visited. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to explore the shops, but since we were travelling on a budget, it was probably not a bad thing. Both of us have decided to return one day and spend some time in the shops when we were not travelling on a backpacker's budget.

Food, food, food - Kansas City had some excellent restaurants so we should tell you about the rest of our meals there. The most famous place we visited was listed in the "1000 Places to See and Do Before You Die", and was called "Arthur Bryant's". We visited the traditional barbecue restaurant, located at 1727 Brooklyn, that had served patrons of Kansas City, as well as many famous people and visitors to the city, for many, many years. Yes, we were trying to cross off as many things in the "1000 Places" book's extensive list this year, so that there would be fewer to see in the future.

Other food that we ate had more of a Tex-Mex or Mexican feel to it. We mentioned "Chipotle", where we ate the first evening nearby Heather's house; it was located on North Flintlock Road in Liberty, the suburb where Heather lived. The reason the staff had comped our meal was because we were taking photos of the staff making our delicious burritos and tacos while we were explaining to them about our travels this year. Whilst talking to them, the manager of the restaurant rang up our food but marked the price to zero, thus giving us our meals for free! It was a nice surprise and we were really gracious for the friendliness that we were dealt with on our first night in Kansas City.

The other restaurant we ate with a Mexican feel was "Margarita's", located in the downtown area known as "Little Mexico". There were many unique Mexican restaurants spread out along a main road downtown, all of which we would have enjoyed trying, had we had more time. Since Karen was with us by this point of the trip and, since her favourite place downtown was Margarita's, we all acquiesced. It was a great meal with superb service and we will always remember sharing the wonderful "Margarita's dip" with Heather and Karen that day. The dip was made with a creamy white cheese base that had spinach and other herbs mixed inside. The corn tortilla chips that were served with the dip were so fresh and warm that they melted in our mouth - yum!

It was sad to say goodbye to Heather, Jack and Jersey, but we had to move on. We nearly talked Heather into joining us in St. Louis for part of the weekend, but she would have had to turn around and return home after one night in St. Louis. That, added to the complication of finding a good kennel for Jersey, meant that Heather reluctantly declined our invitation to join us, but we understood completely and bid her farewell until next time. Perhaps next time will be in London, a place that Heather should definitely visit so we can return the favour of her hospitality!